KINDRED[19]
By HARRIET MAXON THAYER
(From _The Midland_)
If I had had a less positive sense of revulsion for him, I might have
been able to treat him with more contempt, certainly with more
indifference. It was a part of Con Darton's power that those who knew
him should waver in their judgments of him, should in turn reproach
themselves for their hardness of heart and then grow angry at their own
lack of assuredness. Perhaps it was the disquieted gray eyes in the lean
leathery face, or the thin-lipped mouth that I had seen close so foxly
after some sanctimonious speech, or the voice which, when not savage
with recrimination, could take on a sustained and calculated intonation
of appeal,--perhaps these things aroused my interest as well as my
disgust. Certain it is that other men of a like feather, sly, irascible,
gone to seed in a disorderly Illinois town, I should have avoided. I
made the excuse of Lisbeth, and it was true that her welfare, first as
his daughter and later as the wife of my friend, was very dear to my
heart. Yet that could not explain the hypnotism the man had for me,
befogging, as it sometimes did, an honest estimate.
There were, of course, moments of certainty. I recalled village
anecdotes of bitter wrangles among the Dartons with Con always coming
out best.
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